President Biden visits Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Wednesday for his annual physical exam and the results are sure to be closely watched as the 81-year-old president seeks re-election.

Biden, already the oldest president in American history, would be 86 years old at the end of a second term if he wins one. After his last physical, conducted in February 2023, doctors declared Biden healthy, vigorous and fit to perform his duties in the White House.

But voters are approaching this year’s election with doubts about Biden’s age, after scrutinizing his blunders, his coughing, his slow gait and even a fall from his bicycle.

I’m going to Walter Reed to get my physical, Biden told reporters as he left the White House, which said it would release a written summary of the case.

routine

check later in the day.

Former President Trump, 77, is the favorite to clinch the Republican nomination later this month, which would bring him closer to a rematch against Biden in November. Trump was 70 when he took office in 2017, making him the oldest US president to be inaugurated, until Biden broke his record by being inaugurated in 2021 at the age of 78.

A recent special counsel report examining Biden’s possession of classified documents repeatedly mocked Biden’s memory, calling it hazy, vague and subject to significant limitations. It also noted that Biden could not remember major milestones in his own life, such as when his son Beau died or when he was vice president.

Still, on the night of the report’s release, Biden told reporters: “My memory is fine and I became visibly angry when he denied forgetting when his son died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.”

Testing memory and cognitive skills

his is

usually not part of routine physics like Biden’s

undergo

.

His latest physical exam revealed that the president had a lesion removed from his chest last year, but the results were otherwise largely consistent with findings after Biden’s previous exam in November 2021. That report noted that his occasional coughing was due to acid reflux, while his stiffened gait was the result of arthritis of the spine, a previously broken foot and neuropathy in his feet.

The White House also announced last summer that Biden had started using a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine at night to help with sleep apnea, which could be reflected in the final report his doctors will release on Biden’s physical on Wednesday.

The president underwent a colonoscopy in 2021, during which a benign-looking 3-millimeter polyp was identified and removed. In 1988, Biden had surgery to repair two brain aneurysms, which are weak bulges in the arteries, and one of them leaked, but subsequent tests never revealed evidence of recurrences.

Many Americans, including Democrats, have expressed reservations about Biden’s bid for a second term. Only 37% of Democrats say Biden should seek reelection, down from 52% before the 2022 midterm elections, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

However, polls also show similar reluctance toward Trump, and that hasn’t stopped them from moving closer to their party’s nominations.

Biden has suggested that old age brings wisdom, and he has begun to criticize Trump for the former president’s recent public blunders.

Biden joked that his age was classified information and suggested during a New York taping on Monday of “Late Night With Seth Meyers” that Trump accidentally mentioned his wife, Melania, Mercedes during a weekend speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, even though Trump’s campaign says he was referring to political commentator Mercedes Schlapp.

Trump has had his own share of verbal errors, confusing the city and state where he campaigned, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban the leader of Turkey and repeatedly mispronouncing the militant group Hamas as hummus. More recently, he confused his Republican primary rival Nikki Haley with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While president, Trump’s annual physical in 2019 revealed that he had gained weight and weighed up to 243 pounds. With his 6-foot-4 frame, this meant Trump’s body mass index was 30.4. An index score of 30 is the level at which doctors consider someone obese according to this commonly used formula.

Trump won Michigan’s Republican primary on Tuesday, and Biden easily won the state’s Democratic primary. But a noncommittal campaign, organized by activists disillusioned with the president’s handling of the war in Gaza, far exceeded the 10,000-vote margin in the Democratic primary. That was the margin by which Trump won Michigan in 2016 and the goal set by organizers was a potential source of embarrassment for Biden’s reelection campaign.